In light of all the stuff about Thiel and friends, I'd really stay away from Tolkien/Middle-Earth themed startup names for now...
Anything else I missed?
E.g. the "Palantíri" were devices for long-distance communication and observation from an ancient civilization - which eventually got captured and corrupted by Sauron and turned into mind control / propaganda devices.
The depiction of the One Ring, is of course well known.
Tolkien himself also had some personal experiences with landscape destruction through industrialisation and experienced WWI, the "first industrialized war" firsthand, which I think gave him a profoundly negative outlook on technology.
Given all this, I find it sort of interesting that so many "Techies" are diehard fans of him, not to mention even naming startups after his works.
Torment Nexus goes again...
(There is probably some hypocrisy in his works, in the sense that only "modern" or "magical" technology gets that treatment. Everything at medieval or pre-medieval level is fine)
> Despite its Tolkien-inspired name, Earendil is not a tech company with fascist tendencies. Quite the opposite. They are basically well-meaning hippies in my book